Blue Lips
by abscondingParadox
Summary: Things were simple at first, as most instances of young love are. But that doesn't change the fact that this was most likely doomed from the start. A three part story precursor to my ongoing "Cheers to the Teenage Years" AU. Rated for some content and language.


**_"You are the dancing queen, young and sweet, only seventeen..."_ -ABBA**

It had been simplest when they were sixteen, too young and too dumb to respond to the hate, the words that had been hurled their way with the intent to draw blood. Why worry what people thought, so long as your best friend was willing to loan out her heart to you in exchange for a promise that would be impossible to keep?

Street corners and the buildings tethered to them became their havens, as homes seemed too public, only meant to be temporary. They meet in the day, quietly.

Before a careless whisper could singe away the shadowed secret that had become _them_, they had been golden.

Their first kiss leads to more, giggling and the hushed silence of discovery protected by the sanctuary that was nighttime. Stolen merlot and tangled limbs became just another secret, just another notch carved into an ivory bedpost.

Feferi smiled as the world marched on around them, ignoring their shallow talk of filth and snobbery, and found solace in the arms of her closest friend. Vriska was more than willing to play along, to endure the beatings and the lies that she bared at home for a chance to see her princess happy.

When they first came together, it's soft.

The night is spent in the spacious guest suite of the Pexies' Estate, silken sheets and smooth skin soft in pale moonlight. Vriska threw herself into it, into the pleasure and the taste of _her _that lingered on her lips; thighs shaking while thin fingers did their work. She can play her body as if it's an instrument, tongue and lips bringing her higher and higher with each well-placed touch.

Feferi drowns in the sensations of it all, and hugs the skinny girl to her chest after they both collapse onto the bedspread, kissing her face as she sleeps.

As these nights continued, a pattern emerged; Vriska was always gone by morning.

Mistakes and impressions are made and remade, as they are over time, and their descent begins as the world blindly marches on. Clouds give way to wind, thicker than the pale skin that's slit as a way to feel, to experience any sensation. Classes are passed and skipped by one. The other turns her head from the static that has replaced her first love.

It's no less than three months later when it becomes apparent that something is horribly wrong.

Feferi had never quite noticed how clearly the green-blue bruises stood out against her girlfriend's (such a foreign word) skin, which seemed to be stretched tight over her muscle and bone. Vriska herself claimed that she was losing weight because of the basketball season, and that 'no of course I'm eating three meals a day, honestly babe you sound just like Aranea'.

It hadn't been until she stopped eating that it had found its way into their centers.

Innocent observations are met only with accusations, defenses beginning to pile like stones into walls too high to step over all too quickly. Soon, only the gaps between well-crafted lies provide means of communication.

When they resolve to fix this, neither bothers to make the first effort.

When asked why they do not just part altogether, neither can give the first answer.

When they came together again, things were sour.

Vriska had arrived that night to a warm welcome; no parents, no siblings, and no school for a long weekend at the Estate. As soon as the door had been opened, she collapsed on the threshold, head only cushioned by Feferi's left arm.

Feferi had tried, in vain, to force a piece of toast into her, only to be met with tears and outright refusal before a slamming door. The call later in the evening shed light on the fact that there had been a wall between them for some time, seemingly unseen for so long.

Had it always been there?

The nurses worked silently into the night, no one having the heart to tell the young woman in the fuchsia overcoat that it was time to leave Vriska Serket's room until visiting hours began in the morning.

She clutched a tear-stained letter in her hand, sealed with a blue-lipped kiss. A 'Happy Birthday' card.

Feferi Pexies turned seventeen quietly, and lost pieces of herself over and over that year.

Vriska Serket stared in awe at the entirety of it, at the wall, at the girl whom she loved, much more than she did her mother or sister, and wondered how things could have come to this.


End file.
